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The Castle-class corvettes were an updated version of the much more numerous s of the Royal Navy, and started appearing during late 1943. They were equipped with radar as well as asdic. ==Design== The Admiralty had decided to cease Flower-class construction in favour of the larger s as the Flower class had originally been intended for coastal escort work and were not entirely satisfactory for Atlantic convoy service. In particular, they were slow, poorly armed and rolled badly in rough seas which quickly exhausted their crews. However, many shipyards were not large enough to build frigates. The Castle class was designed to be built on small slipways for about half the overall effort of a . The Loch-class frigate was similar to a River but built using the system of prefabrication.〔Brown, p. 131〕 The appearance of Castle-class corvettes was much like the later "long forecastle" variant of the Flowers and they were a little larger (around 1,200 tons – about 200 tons more than the Flowers, and longer). The most obvious visual difference, was the lattice mainmast instead of the pole version fitted to the Flowers. There was also a more square cut look to the stern although it was still essentially a cruiser spoon type, this difference was only visible from abaft the beam. The armament differed from the Flower class with the depth charge fitment replaced by one Squid anti-submarine mortar. ''Hadleigh Castle'' received the first production Squid mounting; the World War I-era medium-velocity surface-only BL 4-inch Mk IX main gun firing a shell was replaced by the new low-velocity QF 4-inch Mk XIX gun on high-angle/low-angle mounting firing a heavier shell which added anti-aircraft capability to the existing capability against surface targets such as submarines. The propulsion machinery was identical to the Flowers and experienced officers felt that they were seriously under powered, having a tendency to turn into the wind despite everything the helmsman could do. The fact that Squid attacks required a fairly low speed (compared to depth charge attacks) only made matters worse. Most of the Castle-class corvettes had been discarded by the end of the 1950s but a few survived a little longer as weather ships. The last Castle was the Uruguayan training ship ''Montevideo'', originally , which was scrapped in 1975. Most were operated by the Royal Navy but twelve were transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) before completion and one to the Royal Norwegian Navy. Three Castles were sunk through enemy action and Castles participated in the sinking of seven U-boats. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Castle-class corvette」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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